Investigation into the use of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) for organic dye analysis

Abstract

In art conservation, color is essential to understanding a society's culture and history-as an indicator of beauty, status, religion, and more-but has a tendency to fade and diminish over time. Analytical techniques, particularly that of pigment identification, can reveal the artifact's original color and appearance and give new insights to an artist's intentions, techniques, date of creation, and more. However, most identification procedures are invasive and destroy the samples in the process. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has recently been identified as a technique that is minimally invasive and also solves the issue of fluorescence that is found in many other techniques. In this paper, a specific SERS procedure has been developed for the identification of yellow organic dyes from 18th century Japanese Woodblock prints. Several SERS spectra of nine dyes both in solution and applied on artist paper have also been documented in hopes of assisting with pigment identification in the future.